Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll called out NFL owners over their insufficient hiring of minority candidates, according to ESPN. Carroll is said to have put owners in the crosshairs at the league’s meetings in Palm Beach, Florida, last week. The 70-year-old said the hiring of minority candidates will not improve until owners accept that there are candidates that are different than themselves.
Carroll reportedly spoke for 10 minutes during a meeting of GMs and coaches last Tuesday, which was a day after the NFL announced that all 32 teams must hire a minority offensive assistant coach for the 2022 season. The league also added women to the language of the Rooney Rule on all levels. While those policy changes are a positive step, Carroll relayed that owners will need to change for true change to spark.
“He just went off,” a source with knowledge of Carroll’s comments told ESPN. “He was saying, you can do anything but until owners get to know these candidates before the actual interviews and understand that they have to hire people who are different than them, it’s not going to really change.”
ESPN reports that owners “weren’t happy” when they learned of Carroll’s comments.
Meanwhile, the new policy that the NFL that was established at last week’s meetings says that a coach can be “a female or a member of an ethnic or racial minority.” That coach will be paid from a league-wide fund and must work closely with the head coach and offensive staff. The goal of this policy is to have more minority coaches in the hiring pool whenever jobs open up throughout the league.
Currently, there are six minority head coaches, which include three that were hired this offseason: Mike McDaniel (Dolphins), Lovie Smith (Texans) and Todd Bowles (Buccaneers).
